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n anti-vaccine movement has been overwhelming social media in our country. They are well organized and respond swiftly to any counterattack aimed at their campaign. What they are ignoring is a World Health Organization (WHO) publication, which states that vaccination greatly reduces diseases and economic impacts.

It is interesting that the anti-vaccine movement was first popularized in the United States at the end of the 19th century when British anti-vaccinalist William Tebb visited that country. This movement has since spread quickly to the rest of the world, including Indonesia.

This situation somehow creates doubts and disbelief regarding the vaccination procedure, with people believing that the conventional methods for vaccination are unsafe. What most people do not know is that bioinformatics has made the vaccines much safer products than before.

Bioinformatics is a multidisciplinary science that combines biology and information technology. Biomedicine, as the frontier of medical sciences, has greatly benefited from bioinformatics because wet laboratory data can be managed to generate insightful information for vaccine development. Various sophisticated biomedical instruments require data management to cope with the flood of information coming from them.

Not long after Edward Jenner developed the vaccination procedure against smallpox in the 18th century, the discipline of immunology was born, helped along by Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov from Russia in the early 20th century. The advancement of bioinformatics, especially after the development of data science, has influenced immunology as well.

Thanks to bioinformatics, we could now conduct immunology research right on our desktop computers. Some modern vaccines, such as the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, were also developed with the assistance of bioinformatics methods.

The new vaccine for HPV is much safer because it does not use live attenuated pathogens. Instead, it uses parts of those pathogens, such as whole proteins or epitopes (short strand of amino acid polymers) that are definitely absent from their genetic materials. Computer modeling is used to predict the proteins or epitopes that would react to our immune systems, in order to provide us with complete protection.

This safe approach for vaccine development is considered innovative and has minimal side effects. However, even a single side effect could not justify rejecting vaccination for the whole population, as long as it is deemed to be an isolated phenomenon. Scientists realize this shortcoming and are currently working hard on personalized medicine.

An even newer discipline, personalized medicine has provided solutions for coping with medication side effects. In the field of drug development, it is now believed that not every drug is suitable for everybody. Bioinformatics has helped to leverage personalized medicine for vaccine development by providing the database for specific Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) for different races in the world.

Vaccines could be developed by considering the diversity of races. Moreover, bioinformatics has enabled scientists to devise a solid information system for recognizing the molecular mechanism of the pathogens.

WHO always suggests that its member states introduce compulsory vaccination. The global organization only calls for a waiver from compulsory vaccination when high community demand and acceptance make it unnecessary.

Indonesia is one of the countries that should be pushed more for its vaccination compliance, and not vice-versa. Reports on this matter should be read not only by medical practitioners and Health Ministry officials, but also by everybody involved in developing health policy, even at the municipality and district level.

These WHO reports are available at our fingertips anyway. Doubts also arise because certain vaccines, such as MMR, are considered not halal or forbidden under Islam. Actually, simple molecular diagnostics could provide evidence, for instance by the detection of porcine DNA or any protein that came from pigs.

If you have doubts about the halal status of vaccination, suggesting rejection is not a solution and too extreme. Suggesting the government conduct a more thorough investigation by using molecular diagnostics is much wiser and more reasonable. The defect in science is something we should repair, instead of throwing it into the trash bin. Lastly, immunization is a child’s right and it is protected under Child Protection Law No. 23/2002 and Health Law No. 36/2009. Breaching those laws certainly have legal consequences.

We should support advancement in science, such as progress in personalized medicine for creating much more robust and safer vaccines. Rejecting this recent progress will leave our children unprotected from dangerous diseases and eliminate hope of a cure for future epidemics. For this reason, central, regional and municipal governments have to enforce vaccination of children for the sake of their health and well-being.
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The writer, who has PhD in bioinformatics from University of Leipzig, Germany, heads the Bioinformatics Department at the Indonesia International Institute for Life Sciences, Jakarta and is a member of Indonesian Young Academy of Science.